BitGo Works Towards ‘Full-Stack Solution’ with Harbor Acquisition

Acquisition

With roots in custodial services surrounding digital assets, BitGo has established themselves as an industry mainstay since their 2013 launch.  In the time since, the team behind the Californian company has managed to expand their offerings, growing with the industry it serves.

BitGo has clearly recognised a major shift in the world of blockchain, as digital securities have captured the interest of investors and companies, alike.  Not content with complacency, BitGo has just announced the acquisition of digital securities tokenization platform, Harbor.

On the surface, this move may have caught some by surprise.  When looking closer, however, this isn’t necessarily the case.  BitGo has shown a proclivity for acquisitions in the past, which have each expanded their services in a direct manner.  The pairing of BitGo and Harbor is one that dates back multiple years, as the companies have long worked with one another.

Through their complimentary services, pre-existing relationship, and past actions, the deal looks closer to obvious than a surprise.

At the time of writing, financial details surrounding this acquisition have not been made available.

Services Inherited

As stated, BitGo has shown a proclivity for strategic acquisitions.  Each of their past acquisitions have provided the company access to new capabilities, which are then able to be offered to clientele in an increasingly comprehensive platform.  This acquisition is no different.

Following this development, this list touches on just a few designations now held by BitGo.

• Broker-Dealer
• Transfer agent
• Custodianship
• Staking Infrastructure

Clearly, as made evident from this comprehensive list of designations, BitGo is well on their way to achieving their goal of offering what it calls a ‘full-stack solution for digital securities’.

Commentary

Upon announcing BitGo’s acquisition of Harbor, representatives from each company took the time to comment.

Mike Belshe, CEO of BitGo, stated,

“Our vision has always been bigger than wallets and custody and acquiring Harbor furthers BitGo’s vision of building a new digital infrastructure for financial services…We believe participants will ultimately need trusted, full-stack solutions for digital currencies and now BitGo is well positioned to address institutional requirements as the market develops.”

Josh Stein, CEO of Harbor, stated,

“BitGo has been an important partner since Harbor inception. We’ve worked closely together to integrate BitGo Business Wallets and BitGo Custody into Harbor’s services…Harbor provides BitGo with a complementary technology stack for the lifecycle of digital securities, as well as important service capabilities through our digital assets broker-dealer and transfer agent subsidiaries.”

BitGo

Founded in 2013, BitGo maintains headquarters in Palo Alto, California.  The company has developed into a full spectrum service provider for the blockchain industry.  The company indicates that its operations now span over 50 countries.  Furthermore, they facilitate over $15 billion in crypto-transaction on a monthly basis.

CEO, Mike Belshe, currently oversees company operations.

Harbor

Founded in 2017, Harbor is a United States based company, which specializes as a tokenization platform.  The team at Harbor, notably, developed the ‘R-Token’ standard – tailor built to serve digital securities.

CEO, Josh Stein, oversaw operations prior to acquisition.  It is believed that BitGo will retain Stein in some capacity.

Changing of the Guards

The development discussed here today marks, not the first, but one of several major acquisitions seen in the blockchain industry over the past few months.

Only days ago, we were reporting on the potential upcoming sale of SeedInvest – a crowdfunding platform operated and owned by Circle.  This expected sale is taking place after Circle made the decision to re-focus their efforts, specifically on stablecoins, rather than exchanges, tokenization, etc.

Circle Attempts to Sell SeedInvest, Doubling Down on Stablecoins